The pub has a staggering list of awards and credentials, including being the only UK pub certified by the Soil Association; creator of the first fish policy to gain Marine Conservation Society approval; London Dining Pub winner in the Good Pub Guide three times; and winner of an RSPCA Ethical Business Award. Owner Geetie Singh received an MBE in 2009.

I wondered whether the Duke of Cambridge’s critical acclaim may have gone to its head and turned it into a pretentious gastropub (or that it might be so evangelically organic that I’d feel out of place not dressed from head-to-toe in hemp).

Happily, this was not the case at all. Being several hundred metres off Essex Road means the clientele has made a conscious effort to be there. Mismatched tables and chairs, candle-lighting and friendly staff make it cosy and welcoming, and I was fascinated by the shelves packed with homemade jars of pickles and preserves.

The pub’s commitment to locally-grown and organic produce is impressive: 80% of fresh produce comes from the Home Counties, and only those ingredients which are in season are used. Tea, coffee, chocolate and nuts are Fair Trade; wine, beer and soft drinks are organic; and the pub buys and uses entire animals, wasting nothing at all. Lesser-known, sustainably-caught fish like gurnard and pollack are preferred and only filtered tap water is served.

But something I was particularly interested to hear about was the Duke of Cambridge’s commitment to its local community. Chefs from the pub have trained the cooks at nearby Thornhill Primary School to create healthy menus of local produce. They have also worked with Kate Greenaway Nursery to create a community kitchen, and taught the pupils at Highbury Fields Secondary School to cook and serve healthy, organic dishes to their classmates. It’s this level of community-involvement that puts the Duke of Cambridge in a different league to some of London’s other excellent organic eateries, like Bumpkin and Daylesford Organic cafés, for me.

The pub’s insistence on seasonal produce means the menu changes twice a day, but you can download a sample menu for each season to give you an idea of the treats in store. On the menu on Thursday night was Stichelton and pear salad; duck with potatoes; sustainably-sourced mussels with white wine, cream and parsley; wild boar; quiche with Portobello mushrooms and beetroot salad and more. I plumped for crispy goose croquettes served with a spicy tomato salsa that cut through the richness of the goose perfectly. At £8-£12 for starters and £12-£22 for main courses, it is certainly not a cheap-eat. But if you’ll consider paying a premium to know where your steak or spinach came from, the D of C is definitely worth crossing the river for.

*See 4Food for articles on topics including food waste, Fairtrade food, and where to buy sustainable fish.

Strawberry mountain

I loved Chelsea Flower Show last year so was keen to go along when the Bermuda Department of Tourism invited me. Last year, most of my favourite gardens were big show gardens outdoors, but this year I made more time for the exhibitors inside the floral marquee, and found lots of interesting smaller gardens. Here’s the 10 I liked best overall this year (in no particular order):

1. The tunnel of clematis of all different shades of purple and white, created by Raymond Evison and his Guernsey Clematis team

2. A huge mountain covered in nothing but strawberries that gave off the most delicious smell – but had a strict no-picking policy

3. An intricate display of flowers tucked into every crevice of an old, gnarled tree, making it look a bit like a maypole

Tree decked in flowers

4. The Bermuda garden, which was styled around a giant stone shaped like a polo – the ‘moonstone’ which Bermudians have in their gardens to bring good luck, and often used in wedding ceremonies

5. The Tourism Malaysia garden, again created by TV-gardener James Wong, but this year inspired by the pool-gardens of urban houses in Malaysia. Malaysia deservedly took home a gold award again this year

6. The incredible jockey’s jackets crafted out of flowers by entrants in the RHS Young Chelsea Florist of the Year competition

7. The Principality of Monaco’s chic, architecture-led garden with swimming pool and decking. As I left the show at 8pm I was mesmerised by the robot pool cleaner

Jockey's jackets

8. Sri Lanka’s beautiful orchid garden. Sri Lanka also pulled off a rather impressive list of celebrity drop-ins: Bill Bailey, JLS, Rick Stein, Jane Asher and Helen Mirren

9. The exciting B&Q garden with real goldfish and a striking vertical garden, promoting  techniques for maximising urban space to grow fresh produce

10. The controversial Failte Island ‘sky garden’ (the one that was lifted into the air by a crane every so often). I didn’t get chance to see it aloft but I loved the dense grasses and foliage of the garden, and let’s face it, it would be super-cool to dine in a ‘hanging Eden’.

It was intriguing to compare the terms and concepts we use to describe sustainable food in the UK compared to other European countries. In Copenhagen, the words ‘biological’ and ‘ecological’ seemed fairly interchangeable with the term ‘organic’, though I’d never heard them used before myself.

From speaking to Danish and Dutch journalists, organic/biological food seems to be the bigger trend in those countries, but there is less emphasis on ‘local produce’. In the UK, I think we’re hotter on ‘locally-sourced produce’ at the moment – ‘buying British’ is definitely the in thing right now. And while I’ve eaten in plenty of restaurants which go big on their local food, I haven’t come across so many which categorise themselves overtly as ‘organic’ (or fewer that serve meat, at least). Our being an island perhaps makes us more inclined towards self-sufficiency, whereas food can be transported by land between European countries more easily.

We ate at Copenhagen’s BioM restaurant and had an interesting chat with chef Brian Johansen. The restaurant strives to be as organic as possible, even down to organic-cotton tea towels and organic paint on the walls. Brian is proud to sell organic Naturefrisk cola, which he admits is “the second worst cola in Denmark”.

The chefs do use local and seasonal produce when they can, freezing berries in the summer so they can still make marmalade in the winter. But they are more concerned about the organicity of their produce than about it being locally sourced. They buy organically-grown fruit grown in Kenya, for example. I asked Brian what their thinking behind this is – surely the food miles created by importing such produce offsets the environmental benefits of organic farming?

“It’s a tough decision between polluting the water in our backyards, and polluting the sky,” Brian says. “If you pollute the sky, it’s all around everyone, but at least they’re getting better soil in Africa where it’s growing. I don’t want to buy local if it’s contaminated with chemicals,” he explains.

I see his point but can’t agree with him entirely; if we don’t prevent global warming from irrevocably damaging the planet, won’t the quality of soil in Africa or anywhere be rather irrelevant?

Food miles aside, the most intriguing term I heard in Copenhagen was ‘biodynamic‘ – a concept developed via anthroposophy, which takes organic farming to a whole new and rather far-fetched level:

“The light of the sun, moon, planets and stars …contributes to the life, growth and form of the plant. By understanding the gesture and effect of each rhythm, we can time our ground preparation, sowing, cultivating and harvesting to the advantage of the crops we are raising.”

Apparently, all Denmark’s best wines (yes, they make wine and it’s rather nice) are currently made with grapes grown biodynamically.

Whatever’s next? Horoscopes for horesradish? Tarot cards for turnips?

Following a helpful suggestion from Mr James Litston, I have this lunch-time pan-fried it with a little garlic until it softened (I cheated and sliced the tough stalky bits out).

Then I added two of my free range eggs from James Murdoch’s Duck Lane Farm, some salt and pepper, and cooked gently until firm.

The result was absolutely delicious but did look rather flat.

Which begs the question, when does a frittata become an omelette?

I’ve just received my next box from Farm Direct and it’s another corker. Some of the new products I’m trying:

-  Free range eggs from James Murdoch’s Duck Lane Farm in Cardington, Bedfordshire

-  An amazing walnut and apricot loaf from Matt Jones’ Flour Power City Bakery in Surrey Quays

-  Red, green and yellow peppers from Ted’s Veg Farm in Bennington, Lincolnshire. Hurrah for these being in season in the UK now. I had been buying them from Sainsbury’s I’m afraid

- Garlic, also from Ted’s Veg

-  Rainbow chard from Martin Mackey Ripple Farm Organics in Canterbury (I admit I have no idea what I’m going to do with this yet but in the photo it just looks so pretty)

I’ve already made a tasty breakfast of onion omelette on walnut bread. And lo, the hangover is gone!

Bellamy has come under lots of criticism for his controversial views on climate change – he’s said previously that he doesn’t believe in man-made global warming, and that glaciers are actually advancing, not retreating.

I certainly don’t agree with him on this, but the Green Weekend was more about getting holidaymakers to spot birds and creepycrawlies so I didn’t like to bring it up. And the kids bloody loved him.

While we were chatting about wildlife, one of the main issues he described was way in which conifers have radically changed the British landscape and its biological make-up.

I was aware that conifers are not native to the UK, but hadn’t really appreciated how they came to be here and the threat they pose to our ecosystems, so I did a bit more research.

Apparently, just after the First World War, whole swathes of native woodland were chopped down to replace it with quick-growing conifers like the Sitka spruce from North America. We needed a ready supply of wooden pit props for use in coal-mining; at one point during the war, we’d almost run out of them and couldn’t import them because of the German blockade, and we couldn’t take that same risk again. So the Forestry Commission was set up, and quickly set about intensive tree farming of monoculture conifers.

The Independent’s Michael McCarthy says:

Over the hills of England, Wales and Scotland the great austere blocks of huddled conifers began to spread, 150,000 hectares by 1939, and then at a gathering pace after the Second World War: 310,000 hectares in the Fifties, 365,000 hectares in the Sixties. No matter that nobody liked it. No matter that much of our ancient broadleaved woodland, its value unrecognised, was being cut down at the same time. No matter that sites of beauty and conservation value were being swamped. The dark monoculture advanced remorselessly, until by 1980 the woodland cover of Britain, which in 1919 had been the lowest of any major European country, at less than 5% of the land, had doubled to over two million hectares.

The impact of this (apart from them looking so dark and ominous compared to our native broadleaved forests) is that it changed habitats for wildlife. Conifers don’t let light through to the forest floor. They have also been blamed for acidifying water - making some lakes and rivers un-liveable for fish.

David Bellamy’s answer is to cut down all the conifers and transform our landscape back to how it was a few thousand years ago; I’m not sure the Christmas tree industry would be too pleased.

He also emphasised how radically agriculture has changed the UK landscape. “All the best land is covered with cereals now – that’s why we don’t see bees and butterflies anymore,” he explained.

We also had a good discussion  about the need to get more young people into countryside careers. “Young people don’t know about or don’t want to be farmers and gamekeepers anymore,” he said.

Agriculture was certainly never on my radar as a potential career-path, and I can’t remember a single classmate for whom it was. The growth in sales of locally-sourced produce in the UK is enouraging, but with the number of young people going into agriculture on the decline, who’s going to grow it all? I’ll sit and eat my onions from Lincolnshire and spinach from Kent quite happily – but would I be happy to get out there and do the hard work?

David’s suggestion is some kind of national eco-service: “If I were prime minister, I’d make every child between school and university go and work in the countryside and learn how to look after it”, he says.

One of the six tennets of the RSPB’s ‘Letter To The Future” campaign is for the government to commit more money to getting school children out of the classroom and into the countryside and nature reserves to experience wildlife for themselves.

If so few young people are even familiar with the countryside, we  can’t be surprised if they don’t consider working in it to be a feasible career choice.

Joining a ‘veg box’ scheme has been on my list of green things I really ought to do for a couple of years but when I checked it out it seemed extremely restrictive – having to commit to the same thing every week, prohibitively expensive, or limited in what they offer.

But at the Camden Green Fair a few weeks back I visited the Farm Direct stall and their set-up is completely different.

You don’t have to order the same thing each time, and you don’t even have to place an order each week – perfect for me as I’m away such a lot. Also, they sell so much more than fruit and veg – they have meat, fish, cheese, fruit juice, bread, flowers, jams and more, with different options each week depending what they’ve sourced.

The depot is close to me in Holloway so I can go and pick it up if I can’t be in for delivery on a Saturday or Sunday. And though delivery normally costs £3.95, you get it free on your first order, and if you have a neighbour who’s also interested, they’ll deliver to you both for free. Apparently there’s someone else in my block of flats who’s already using the service so Farm Direct’s going to put me in touch with them.

Farm Direct is also much clearer on exactly where all of their produce has been sourced from, right down to the name of the farmer, unlike veg box pioneers Able & Cole who aren’t able to give you specifics. I loved reading that my minced lamb came from Nicola Bulgin’s Beatbush Organic Farm in Methwold, Norfolk; my chicken from Gill Wing’s Organic Farm in Sussex; my natural yoghurt from Chris Timotheou’s Dairy in Chalfont St Peter; my splendid rye loaf made by Matt Jones’ Flour Power City Bakery in Surrey Quays, London; spinach from Martin Mackey Ripple Farm Organics in Canterbury, and so on.

I’ve already had one salad using my rocket, cucumber and carrots and it was deeee-licious. They even threw in a bunch of dahlias for free as I had a promo code from the Fair!

But however much I’ve been impressed by the service and the quality of the produce they offered, I simply couldn’t justify it if it costs a lot more than I budget for. But I’ve just priced up what I’d normally have spent at Sainsbury’s and it’s barely any different.

In fact, the lamb, chicken and rocket came in cheaper. The total cost for the basket at Sainsbury’s would have been £17.39 (see pricing to the right).

For infinitely better quality produce, all locally-sourced, I paid just £18.36 with Farm Direct (see pricing below). And I didn’t have to struggle home on the bus with all my shopping bags!

There are still a few staples which I’ll have to go to the supermarket for – Ryvita, Actimel, tinned stuff and so on. But I’m hoping I might be able to stock up on these once a month since they aren’t perishable. Farm Direct also seems very open to new suggestions so I might put in a request for cottage cheese in case that’s something they can work on…

Inkaterra has some of the most exciting, sustainable hotels in Peru. It all started in the 1970s with Inkaterra Reserva Amazonica right in the Amazon jungle. Next were La Casona in Cusco, part of the super-luxury Relais & Chateaux collection, and Machu Picchu Pueblo Hotel right by Machu Picchu. Inkaterra has now launched another sister brand, ‘by Inkaterra’, which is slightly more affordable but retains the same eco credentials.

The hotel group has its very own research arm, the InkaTerra Association, and employs its own scientists – guests can help out too while staying there.

All the guides or ‘interpreters’ employed to give wildlife tours are local, and real experts. I know what a difference this can make – when I went backpacking in Peru we got totally ripped off. The guides who took us into the rainforest didn’t have a clue what they were looking at and I had to point out wildlife to my friend.

Across its various properties, Inkaterra has been responsible for the discovery of many new species of frogs and orchids and planted countless trees and restored other habitats. Machu Picchu Pueblo Hotel holds the record for the highest number of native orchid species found in their natural environment in the world!

With all this talk of sustainability, Bumpkin seemed a particularly appropriate choice for the press lunch – all of their produce comes from right here in the UK (except its olive oil – which we really do struggle to produce in this climate, apparently), right down to seasonal cocktails. I enjoyed a lovely duck breast with spring onion and tarragon cake. This does go against my Meat Free Monday efforts, but I didn’t have meat at all over the weekend so I reckon Sir Paul would forgive me?

Inspired by the lovely, locally-sourced salads on the menu at Bumpkin I came home this evening and vowed to have one more go at growing something for myself on the balcony. I know what I got wrong last time – the soil level was too low, so the lettucey shoots had to struggle too high to reach the sunlight and went all limp and wobbly and died. So I’ve topped the soil right up, and also sown just a fine row of seeds, as opposed to chucking in the whole packet like I did last time (also wrong, it would appear).

If it doesn’t work this time, those bloody troughs are going in the bin.

In other balcony news, we most definitely have some birds visiting the feeder now as the sunflower hearts have almost all gone. Wildlife triumph!

I was a guest of the Malaysia Tourist Board, which won Gold for its rainforest-inspired garden, designed by James Wong (off the Grow Your Own Drugs programme on TV).

The garden was really beautiful, with square stone slabs like stepping-stones on a shallow lake, and shiny foliage of different greens, shapes and textures.

I heard a few visitors grumble that there weren’t actually any flowers, but I loved it – much more to my taste than rows of rhodedendrons or pots of pansies.

A soundtrack of bird and animal noises played softly in the background and it was so relaxing I almost fell asleep on the Minister of
Tourism.

Dato Sri Dr Ng Yen Yen, the minister, told me all about the flowers in her own garden, and about the government’s plan to create a Malaysian version of the Royal Horticultural Society, to get more Malaysians involved in and excited by gardening.

I also had an interesting chat with James himself, about how gardeners often tend to want to grow species from far-away places, instead of appreciating what grows in their ‘own back yard’.

“When I was growing up in Malaysia, all I wanted to do was grow English roses and a perfect striped lawn,” he says. “They’d struggle against the climate. It’s only recently that Malaysians are realising there are so many things around them that are more beautiful than any rose. I hope we’ve shown that our normal plants can win gold on the world stage.”

This got me thinking about the impact of flying and shipping plants and trees from one side of the world to the other to make our gardens look pretty.  There’s often talk about ‘food miles’ but what about ‘plant miles’?

My other favourite gardens at the show included the Global Stone Bee-Friendly Garden, which had a giant message reminding visitors of Albert Einstein’s prophecy that ‘when the last bee disappears off the face of the earth, man only has four years to live” (see my earlier feature on the decline of the honey bee).

I also loved Bradstone Biodiversity Garden which had insect-friendly flowers and log-piles, and a stone pavilion with crevices for nesting birds and bamboo canes to house insects.

The Eden Project garden was huge, if a little bonkers, with rows of old washing machine doors. It did well in the competition but I wasn’t sure if buying the biggest plot of the Show might have anything to do with it.

I was also fascinated by the Naturally Norway garden which was promoting the use of kebony instead of tropical timber for decking and pavilions. Kebony is made using the byproducts of sugar-cane production to harden sustainable wood species like pine and maple, and it looked stunning.

I wasn’t convinced by the Daily Telegraph garden, which seemed to have gone for the overgrown, disused railway track look. I didn’t find it particularly, beautiful, relaxing or interesting but I must have missed the point as it was the overall winner for 2010. Shows what I know…..